In a Nutshell
The QA Interest Group is the main body of the Quality Assurance activity at W3C, with a rather broad focus ranging from helping create better W3C technologies to education and outreach about proper use of the Web, as well as tools development.
The Group is open to anyone, individual or organization, willing to participate in any of the projects or efforts of the group. Most of the work and communication of the group is made through Mailing-Lists and sometimes IRC.
Contact
The co-chairs of the QAIG are Karl Dubost (W3C) and Patrick Curran of Sun Microsystems. For any other communication with the group, please use the group's Mailing-Lists.
About the Quality Assurance Interest Group at W3C
Note that the Quality Assurance Interest Group is now closed.
The QA IG is the main body of the Quality Assurance activity at W3C.
The mission of this Group is stated in its charter :
"The main objective of the QA Interest Group (QAIG) is to
have W3C, its Membership and the Web community involved in QA at large share
their understanding of the work of the W3C QA
Activity, in particular the Activity's relationship with external
organizations; issues with Web certification and branding; its educational
effort; its funding model; etc. The QAIG also represents the interests of
software developers attempting to implement conformant products, notably
those developers who did not participate in writing the applicable W3C
Recommendations.".
There is more information available on the
scope of this group's activities.
Possible Deliverables and Work
These following projects are at work or in need of people to work on. You are welcome to participate. Please send an email to www-qa@w3.org, if you want to contribute.
- W3C Note: Dummy Guide for Test Assertions
- A guide to help Specification developers to create Test Assertions.
- W3C Note: CUAP
- A W3C note about user agent problems which needs to be cleaned up and updated.
- W3C Note: CHIPs
- A W3C note about HTTP server implementation problems which needs to be cleaned up and updated.
- W3C Note: Test Metadata
- The document needs to be republished and polished. And to add an RDF Schema and or XML schema.
- WASP Curriculum for Web Standards
- A survey is in preparation for polling teachers on their standard teaching practices.
Participate in the QAIG
One of the main features of the QA Interest group is its openness to the Web community at large: it is meant as a gathering place where Quality experts, Web developers, Web standards advocates and virtually anyone with interest in improving W3C recommendations and their implementation on the field are welcome to participate in various activities, including:
- Discussion and coordination
- Building a comprehensive set of technical documentation
- Development of Web quality tools
Discussion and coordination: Mailing-lists and meetings
The Mailing-lists of the QAIG
Mailing-lists are the main discussion medium within the QA Interest group and the best point of entry for people willing to participate in the activities of the group.
The two main mailing-lists for the Interest group are www-qa@w3.org, the main discussion list for the Interest Group, and public-evangelist@w3.org, the discussion and coordination mailing-list for Web Standards education, outreach and advocacy.
A detailed description of these lists and their usage policies are available on the separate Lists of the QAIG page.
Meetings of the QA Interest Group
the QA IG does not have scheduled regular meetings. Some face-to-face meetings, as well as teleconferences or meetings on IRC may be organized: they will be announced, and the minutes will be published on the meetings archive of the QA Weblog. All participants to the Interest group are usually welcome to attend these meetings: warning the chairs well in advance is a good idea.
The QA Library : Contribute material
The QA Activity hosts a comprehensive set of technical documentation aimed at Web developers, Web authors and corporate managers: the QA Library. These documents are usually authored by the W3C QA staff after discussion within the mailing-lists of the QA Interest Group, but direct contribution of new material is welcome, as explained in the Guidelines for the contribution of articles for the QA Interest Group.
Development : the QA Development effort
The QA Tools development effort (or, in short, "qa-dev") is one of the projects launched by the QA activity at W3C in order to reach its goal of better implementations of W3C technologies.
qa-dev is animated by volunteer developers working on Web quality tools such as validators and test tools, and QAIG participants with an interest in tools development are welcome to help or participate in this effort.
Learn more about this qa-dev effort and ways to participate.
Charter
The charter for the QA Interest Group has detailed information about the scope and process of the group.